A near universal opt-out on out-of-hours? Dream on!

The headline figure for opting out of out-of-hours has been given as £6,000. It was couched in such flowery terms that none of us saw through the ruse until we started to play with the GPC's spreadsheet. Surely some mistake? I'm afraid not.

The calculation is based on the number of GPs (not whole-time equivalents) and list size. The bigger the practice, the more disproportionate the figure gets. An average practice as quoted in the contract pays £18,000 a year to opt out of out-of-hours.

A practice such as mine, with about 11,000 patients and five partners as 4.25 WTE, will pay £60,000 to opt out (£6,000 x 5) x (11,000/5,500).

And the Government and the GPC think there will be a near universal opt-out. Dream on!